Ready for Ageing? - Select Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change Contents

Annex 3: Attitudes to ageing (see paragraph
8 of the report)

82. For most people, living longer is to be celebrated.
Many people now enjoy fuller retirements than ever before, or
continue to work well into their later life. Older people make
a considerable contribution to society, bringing maturity and
varied life experiences to bear.[57]

83. People's definitions of what it means to
be 'old' have changed, along with ideas about how dependent older
people are. For a lot of people, being 'old' is a state of mind
related to health and the ability to remain independent. The public
does not necessarily associate being 'old' with retirement or
the earlier 60s. Yet this is the age at which many public services,
such as the free bus pass and winter fuel payments, are automatically
handed out. Britons do not see themselves as elderly until they
are approaching 70, and many in their 70s and beyond continue
to be active and engaged in society.[58]

84. If being 'old' does not begin at an arbitrary
age, perhaps it should not be associated with birthdays at all.[59]
Society should move away from thinking about chronological age.
Baroness Greengross, Chief Executive, International Longevity
Centre-UK (ILC-UK), told us that society should "stop thinking
about age itself as some sort of disease or handicap".[60]

85. Employers often equate older age with retirement,
and policy-makers tend to assume that when people reach traditional
retirement age, they will need to be supported by younger taxpayers
(see Annex 4).Age UK considered that there is "a
tendency for people, including politicians and policy makers,
to frame the debate on ageing within a dependency narrative which
sees older people as a 'burden' and a 'drain on the public purse'".[61]
Yet there is no reason why retirement and dependency should relate
to a specific age. Much employment is physically less demanding
than it traditionally was for many, and fewer people are incapacitated
by diseases in later life.Society, the media, and policy-makers
should continue to rethink what they mean when they refer to 'old
age'. Older age should be viewed as a spectrum, involving a smooth
transition through different stages of life.

86. The Government have acted to legislate against
age discrimination, through the Equality Act 2010 and the public
sector equality duty which require equal treatment in access to
employment and public and private services regardless of age.
They have also abolished the default retirement age, so that retirement
ages can only be set where they can be justified objectively.[62]
We welcome these positive steps, but we also heard that negative
attitudes and discrimination towards older age still abound.[63]
Baroness Greengross told us that the "stigma" associated
with older age results in age discrimination. Though the law has
changed, attitudes will take time to catch up, as happened with
previous anti-discrimination legislation.[64]

87. Rather than viewing ageing with horror, society
should pay more attention to the large social and economic contributions
that older people make, in areas such as volunteering, childcare,
care of other adults, charitable giving, and support for younger
generations (see Annex 15).[65]
We heard that:

· 30% of people over 60 volunteer regularly
through formal organisations

· 65% of volunteers are aged 50 or over

· 65% of those over 65 regularly help older
neighbours, and

· one in three working mothers rely on grandparents
for childcare.[66]

88. Age UK have estimated that people aged 50
and over make an unpaid contribution to the economy of £15.2
billion per year as carers, £3.9 billion in childcare as
grandparents and £5 billion as volunteers.[67]
These unpaid inputs reduce public expenditure, enable other people
to work, and help to make our society more cohesive. They remind
us that many older people are anything but dependent (see Annexes
4 and 5).[68]

89. Many of our growing older population are
in good health, will retire with a decent income and a strong
social network, have much to offer society, and will want to combine
work with new activities, volunteering and caring.[69]
One way to promote public understanding that ageing will be a
positive experience for most might be for the Government to produce
a clear guide to the key facts and trends about living longer.
There also needs to be a stronger recognition that older age,
which can be conceived as including everyone from 60 to 120, covers
a huge diversity of ages, levels of health and wealth, and economic
and social activity.[70]
The Government should help people be better informed about
how long they are likely to live in good health, the size of the
pension that they are likely to receive, the likelihood of needing
social care and its cost, and how best to use their own assets.
By helping individuals and families analyse their own situation
and make informed choices, the Government can give people some
of the tools they will need to plan ahead.

90. Providers of both public and private services
need to meet the challenge of the ageing population. But acknowledging
the changing role and diversity of older people puts new responsibilities
on older people themselves: "We could start looking at older
people as the same as everybody else. If they are wealthy, tax
them; if they are frail, they should be able to access services
that support them just like anybody else at any age", John
Kennedy, Director of Care Services, Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust,
told us.[71]

91. It is not always helpful or correct to consider
older people as a homogenous group defined by chronological age.
Age alone is no longer a good predictor of health, wealth, employment
status or activity in society. The Government need to recognise
this when considering how to design public services. The Government
should also work to make society as a whole more aware of the
truth about ageing. A better understanding of the needs and abilities
of the older population should lead not only to better-targeted
public services but also to a private sector that benefits from
a growing market by producing goods and products that the older
population really needs (see Annex 17).